You can't stumble around the Internet these days without bumping into it. News, rumor, speculation, and hot gossip about -- no, not David Letterman's love life (who knew he had one?) or the Jon and Kate Gosselin train wreck -- tablet PCs.
Yes, over the last year the PC's buck-toothed, developmentally challenged second cousin from the sticks has become an Internet darling.
[ Back in the realm of real products, Cringely asks: Where oh where is that 8-hour laptop? | Stay up to date on Robert X. Cringely's musings and observations with InfoWorld's Notes from the Underground newsletter. ]
As the New York Times' Brad Stone and Ashlee Vance so aptly summarize:
Tablets have been around in various forms for two decades, thus far delivering little other than memorable failure. Nonetheless, the new batch of devices has gripped the imagination of tech executives, bloggers and gadget hounds, who are projecting their wildest dreams onto these literal blank slates.
The Times reports Apple has been working on a tablet PC since 2003 -- or about as long as Steve Jobs has been publicly dissing the concept. (Jobs' alleged one-sentence dismissal: "What are these things good for besides surfing the Web on the toilet?")
No matter. Every week brings more "details" about an Apple tablet that Apple claims to know nothing about. A former Newton marketing weasel pro rejoins Apple, and it's yet another sign that the iPad will soon appear, borne aloft by angels next January or possibly February or maybe March.
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Download now »I've owned a non-multi-touch tablet (HP tx2120) for about 2 years (and will get HP's multitouch this month when Win7 comes out). I've been running Windows 7 Release Candidate since it was made public - with no problems.
In most places I can get Wifi (haven't needed EDGE or WiMax yet).
The ability to write smoothly with a Wacom pen and use my finger for anything else (or the keyboard when I have to type a lot) makes this a very useful device.
In meetings, I tend to mix sketches and diagrams with any text notes. Using Microsoft Office OneNote, I can do this and keep a searchable, emailable record of all notes.
My tablet has a decent dual-core AMD chip along with 4GB RAM and 200GB hard drive. I compfortably run the .NET 3.5 stack with SQL 2008 and Visual Studio. This makes it a good developer laptop as well.
Finally, Microsoft's Silverlight 3 supports multitouch hardware so if I felt like developing a cool game, I could.
Doug
We do not have a high speed connectivity problem, the technology exists. Our problem is the BIG telcos want us to give them the M$FT taxation license and total control of access. What we need is CarterFone for wireless!!
Oh! And Cringe, what I want is fingerless gloves (biker already wear some) that virtualize a keyboard anywhere, and Geordi specs that (O.K. plan specs will do if they) virtualize a a hi-res display anywhere I look, as well as a hi-fi sound field around my ears, all connected by a PAN (Personal Area Network) hosting an UberPod PC2E (Personal Connection/Compute Engine) that speaks cell phone, WiMax, WiFi, and whatever else RF based gobbledegook is necessary to let me snoop into everybody's business anywhere. Oh, and give it one kicka** SSH client. U lurkin' Mr. Jobs?
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